Interruption Hack

If you work in any kind of traditional office space, you are likely plagued by drive-by interruptions. People will constantly stop by and talk to you. Some of these conversations are fruitful, some are useless, many could be a chat or email, and all of them cause you to lose focus on what you were working on.

In some offices, it is common practice to not interrupt somebody if they are wearing headphones. This is a cue to leave them alone; they are trying to intentionally focus on something, and do not want to be interrupted. Some offices, and some people, just don’t care about this bit of etiquette, and will interrupt you anyway. Here’s a hack you can use to decrease these types of interruptions.

You have some kind of tool for virtual meetings, right? Something like Microsoft Teams or GoTo Meeting or Zoom, right? These tools let you record the meetings. Just grab one of these recorded meetings and start it playing on a spare monitor, where it is clearly visible to pedestrians passing by. Then you can put on your headphones, mute the volume for the meeting player, and turn up your favorite music, and start up your work. If anybody tries to interrupt you, just point to the meeting playing in the background, and say you are in a call. They’ll wander away to bother the next person on their list.

Note that you shouldn’t over-use this, as people can start to catch on by noticing that your calendar isn’t nearly as booked as you seem to be, or that you seem to be in the same meeting all the time, etc. But for the occasional 1-hour focus session this hack works perfectly.

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